Hack Job was my first build. It was a Beetleweight and competed at one event-the 2016 Penn College SWORD Fall Brawl. It did pretty horrible; it managed to survive the first round of 3-way matches, then was heavily damaged by Don Doefler's Circuit Breaker (horizontal bar spinner), which moved on to win the tournament. Hack Job was too heavily damaged to compete in the rumble and the frame was gutted (most of the internals were destroyed, as well).

Hack Job 1.5 was a quick (and shoddy) rebuild for an in-house event at PCT a few weeks after Fall Brawl. There were several problems with it, including poorly-connected wires. I became so frustrated with it that I just asked another student to 'put it out of its misery' :P

This was my entry for the following Spring's PCT SWORDfights: Revenge of the Wedge. It did somewhat better than its predecessors, surviving through the 3-way matches. However, it did not accumulate enough points to move on into the single-elimination bracket. It competed in the rumble and that's where it took the brunt of the damage and was rendered incapacitated after the first minute or so.

Purple Nation Army is a D2 kit that I purchased from Botkits.com. The D2 3-pound robot kit is damn sturdy and can take a beating from even the most powerful spinning weapons. I decided to go this route because I really needed something where I could LTFD (learn to f***ing drive). I competed in the 2017 BotBlast competition and although my lack of driving experience and a well-calibrated transmitter cost me a spot at contending for a top-3 finish, I still ended up winning the Beetleweight rumble. I was happy just to have a robot that could actually drive&#33;

Next up will be Hack Job 3.0. I need to come up with some CAD renders so I can get parts machined, as well as a more powerful vertical spinner (probably single-toothed). I can't wait to see what the future brings for irl bots-hopefully, I can start working on a larger weight class bot someday.